What is Continuous Integration?
Introduction
Ever wondered about automating the updation part of code? I know it sounds amazing & you seems to have interest in it.
Yes, it is possible to automate the code updation or testing part. In any project, it is suggested to use a VCS (Version Control System), because it helps in collaboration with others and provides relief from manually tracking all the files. Generally “Git” is used as a VCS.
Any successful company or big project today will always provides updates to their project, let’s say there is a bug in the software and it needs to be resolved. So, it becomes very important to resolve that. Let’s say now the patch for the bug is implemented & it is ready to be sent as an update for the software, but before that there is should be testing of the code to ensure that it is working fine. But, the testing part is very hectic & takes a lot of time, and in order to resolve this issue, there comes the concept of Continuous Integration.
Continuous Integration
It is a process which is used to automatically run the tests and update the codes. So, we are left only with creation of patches for the bugs in the code rest everything like merging and testing our code for the project standard is managed by the continuous integration part.
Some Terminologies involved in CI (Continuous Integration):
- Pipeline
- Artifacts
Pipeline
It is just a collection of steps which are implemented in order to create Continuous Integration Part, or we can say that the steps which are needed according to project standard are arranged in a specific order to create a CI pipeline.
Artifacts
These are the files generated during the execution of the Pipeline, these are intermediate files which may or may not be required by the further pipeline steps. Example: PDF, Jar, YAML, etc.
Example of CI Tools:
As Git is used as VCS, but it doesn’t provide the CI functionality, there are multiple tools available for CI part, some of them are “Travis”, “Jenkins”, etc.
I hope this article explained the topic is the easiest way possible. Thank you so much for investing your time to read my article.
